Monday, March 21 ~ Cartagena, Colombia (day 2)

One of the things I love most about cruising is that every day, I wake up in a new country without having to deal with repacking my suitcase or the logistics of international travel.  This morning, I was reminded that land vacations aren’t that bad either, as we were still in the same port as we were when we went to sleep last night, and I was excited about it!  We got to have dinner on shore and experience nightlife and culture in a new country, and it was nice not to have to worry about rushing back to the ship. Another reason I was so excited to wake up today was because it was my birthday and we had something special planned! As I already mentioned, we pre-booked an excursion through Cartagena Connections for $28 USD per person to go to El Totumo mud volcano and to a beach for lunch, including transportation to and from the cruise port.  

Room service delivered our breakfast bright and early at 6:30am (our earliest wake up time for the whole cruise), and we enjoyed a beautiful view of the sunrise as we ate breakfast on our balcony.

We left the ship at 7:45am because we were told to meet our guide at 8am.  Unfortunately, the port shops didn’t open until 8am, and you need to walk through those shops to exit the port area, so we weren’t sure how to get out. We tried walking around the outside of the building the way we came in last night, but the guards told us we couldn’t go that way and we had to wait until the shops opened before we could exit. That wasn’t going to work for us because then we would be late to meet our guide, so we ended up running around in circles for a bit until we figured out another way to exit to the main gate. I was so sick of the horrible logistics of this port!  

At least the peacocks were friendly and said hello!

Once we reached the front gate, the taxi drivers again yelled at us to “Come this way” and “Go with me!” Luckily, Cartagena Connections had told us to look for a woman in a yellow shirt with the company logo, because there was only one woman out there with the taxis and it was very easy to find her.  We actually heard her say my name as we approached because she was talking to another guide about who she was picking up, so it was much less shady than our experience yesterday morning, and we knew we had the correct guide.  

The guide introduced herself as Louisa, and we followed her into a nice, new 15 passenger van and drove 20 minutes to Bocagrande to pick up other people from their hotels.  We pulled up to the first hotel and Louisa went to find the people for our tour.  25 minutes later, she came back and said she could not find them so we left and went to the next hotel.  This time, Louisa left for 10 minutes, then came back and told us the people we are picking up here were at a restaurant eating breakfast.  What?!  We were already 20 minutes late to pick them up due to the people at the prior hotel not showing up.  How rude could these people be to still be at breakfast?!  We would have loved to sleep in a little later and have a leisurely breakfast, but we didn’t because we knew we had an excursion booked and we were expected to meet our guide at a certain time so as to not keep the others on our tour waiting.  I guess not everyone extends that same courtesy to us! We sat there for 15 more minutes, then Louisa finally went to tell them to finish eating and we would come get them later.  Mind you, it was now 9am. We were picked up at 8am and were only supposed to spend 30 minutes picking up other people, but it was now 60 minutes later and we were still the only 2 guests in the van!

We went to 3 other hotels to pick up a few other people who were all ready and waiting to go (somewhat surprisingly considering how late we were to pick them up!).  We then returned to the original hotel and those people were waiting in the lobby… no idea where they were an hour ago!  After that, we went back to the second hotel to get the people who finally finished their breakfast.  At 9:45am, nearly 2 hours after our pick up time, we had all 14 people on the bus and we left for the first stop on our tour.  On the way out of the city, we passed by the beaches in Bocagrande.  It was interesting to see that instead of setting up umbrellas, they set up long rows of tarps and put some chairs underneath for shade.  

It took about an hour and 15 minutes to drive out to El Totumo.  On the way, Louisa played a video to explain how the day we could go.  The recording explained everything in Spanish first, then in English.  The most important thing to learn from this recording was that there are 3 optional services offered at the volcano, but it is NOT optional to tip for the services you opt to use.  The 3 services were a man to take photos on your personal camera while in the mud, a man to give you a massage while you are in the volcano to help work the mud into your skin, and a woman to wash you off and help you remove the mud after you exit the volcano.  The tip fee of 4000 Colombian pesos, or $2 US dollars, is not negotiable.  Our feeling was that if we came this far to experience El Totumo, we wanted to experience everything, so we planned to use all 3 services.

Although Louisa only spoke Spanish and not a word of English, I found it easy to communicate with her and ask her questions throughout the day as she spoke slowly and very clearly.  We were so thankful for that considering the trouble we had communicating with our guide on the Chivas bus!  Louisa explained that our options for lunch were grilled chicken, fried chicken, grilled fish, or a vegetarian option, and all would be served with coconut rice, a side salad, and fried plantains, plus either water, soda, or juice.

We pulled up to the volcano at 10:30am and Louisa said we could spend 1 hour here.  We were in the middle of rural Colombia with no sign of civilization for miles (aside from a small village to house the people who work at the volcano!), and we saw this:

It makes me wonder how they even found it in the first place!  We pulled into the parking lot and could see several small shacks lined up around the perimeter of the volcano.  Louisa explained that this shack had bathrooms and showers where we could get changed into bathing suits, and they also had big lockers to store our belongings for while we were in the mud (they put everyone’s stuff from our whole van into one locker so make sure you bring a bag and not just have your clothes loose!). They also had shacks with small restaurants and bars if you wanted.  

Once I was wearing just my bathing suit and flip flops, a man wearing a Superman baseball cap approached me (J and I called him Superman because we didn’t know his real name), and asked to take my camera so he could take photos while we were in the mud.  J does not travel with a camera, so we asked if he would use my camera to take photos of both of us, and he agreed at no additional cost. Superman led us to the base of the volcano and 2 little boys (maybe 5 or 6 years old, at most!) pointed at our flip flops to ask us to take them off.  The stairs were very steep, at least 18 inches high, and they were covered with clay and rocks so it was sharp on my feet as I climbed to the top of the volcano.  The ground was also very hot so it was hard to walk barefoot.  I really wished they let us wear our shoes, but I soon learned why that wasn’t an option.  Also, while there were hand rails on both sides of the steps, they were awkwardly too high to provide any real support, making it even more difficulty to climb the stairs.  The physical therapist in me was shaking my head… this was not an ADA approved staircase! haha

When we climbed to the top of the stairs, a line formed around the perimeter of the mud pit so we had a few minutes to observe the process while we waited our turn.  

Superman was very thorough in his photography. While we were waiting, I was admiring our view.  El Totumo is by far the tallest object within miles, so we had an incredible view and I wished I had my camera in my hands so I took take photos.  When I was reviewing my photos on the bus later in the day, I found a little surprise from Superman!  He took photos of the view for me!  I guess he knows that everyone would want that photo, but I was still impressed that he did it.

A few things to note in this photo… The small buildings in the bottom left corner are the shacks with the bars and restaurants. The large open dirt area in the top right (which continues very far to the right… Superman didn’t know how to use the panorama function on my camera haha) used to be a lake filled with water! Apparently the drought that dried up the river we were supposed to canoe down in Panama also affected Colombia.  I have seen many photos of this lake from my research before the cruise, so it was surprising to see that it was completely dry!  If you look very closely at the entrance to what used to be the lake, there are some big buckets.  Some of those are filled with salt water, and the rest with fresh water, and that’s what the women used to clean us up.  The walkway between the buildings is the distance we had to walk after getting out of the mud for the women to clean us off.  But let’s not jump too far ahead…

After about 10 minutes, it was my turn to climb down a steep ladder into the mud approximately 20 feet below.  Colombia clearly has no ADA guidelines because this ladder was one of the least safe things I’ve ever been on.  It was basically a vertical ladder with nearly no angle at all so I felt like I was going to plummet to the bottom!  The guys working here only know how to say 4 phrases in English, so they just kept saying “One more!  One more!” to get me to go down each step.  I’m not sure that this photo fully conveys the terrifying fear I felt at that moment lol

Once I reached the bottom of the ladder, one of the guys slid me back into a small opening between 2 other tourists and told me to “lie down!”  My instinct was to sit up and look around so I could take it all in, but he did not like that and kept telling me to lay down haha  It felt like I was basking in a giant vat of chocolate pudding… the mud was super thick and dense so it was easy to stay afloat with no effort at all. There were a bunch of guys in the mud (let’s call them mud men, since “masseuse” would be above their true job description haha) and one came over to me within seconds of me laying down in the mud and started to rub the mud into my skin.  No “Hola!”. No “Como estas?”.  He just got right down to business (luckily I knew to expect that after watching a few people enter the mud before me!).  

He was very thorough, rubbing the mud into my skin from the top of my neck to the bottom of my feet, and everywhere in between! No frisky business or anything like that, but he definitely made sure to cover my entire body in mud.  

After a few minutes, he said the next English phrase… “Turn over!”  I guess that was my cue to roll onto my stomach, so I did as I was told and propped up on my forearms to prevent my face from going into the mud.  It was so bizarre as I felt like I was laying on the floor because the mud was so firm.  I was glad that I wore my sunglasses in there as they worked like protective goggles- there was lots of mud splattering around and I didn’t want any to get in my eyes!  While the mud man was working, I asked him (in Spanish) how many hours a day he spends in the mud.  He said he’s there all day and his skin is like the skin of a baby! haha

After the mud man finished my “massage,” he said his last English phrase…
“Stand up!”  Huh?  Stand up? But there’s no bottom to this volcano! How am I supposed to stand??  As other tourists explained to me, it was best to push my knees down straight and that would pop my torso up so I could “stand” in the mud.  Of course, it was more like vertically floating since my feet weren’t planted on the ground, but close enough!  This was probably the most fun part of the whole process as it was somewhat difficult to maintain your balance.  If anyone bumped into me, or if I tried to turn my head to see what was happening around me, it would throw off my balance and I’d fall backwards into the mud (inevitably hitting someone next to me, causing them to lose balance, and it was like a dominos chain!).  Once J finished his massage, at least we could hang onto each other to maintain our balance.  We were allowed to remain in the mud as long as we wanted, so we spent some time rubbing in the mud a little more and taking in the scene.

Notice how close everyone was to each other?  It got really crowded in there!  I’m sure that was made worse by the fact that no one made us get out of the mud, but they constantly told new people to enter so it just got more crowded as time went on.

After a while, we were ready to get out of the mud… this is where things got really interesting!  Remember how unsafe I felt climbing down the ladder to enter the mud? Well the ladder to exit the mud was significantly worse!  While it was angled more than the other ladder so we didn’t have to climb straight vertically up, the ladder was completely covered in dried mud caked onto every step, with a slick coating of slippery new mud from the people climbing out ahead of us.  Not only that, but the steps slanted down towards the right so every time I stepped up onto a new step, both feet would slide towards the right side and it was very difficult to hold my balance and proceed to the next step!  On the bright side, they had one mud man stationed at the base of the stairs to help scrape the excess mud off before I started to climb. Every step of the way, I was praying that I didn’t fall off the ladder.  I can’t imagine that there hasn’t been accidents here before- the whole thing just felt very unsafe and there’s no way this would every fly in America!  I guess that’s what added to the cultural experience of it all! haha

Yay!  I made it to the top!

Now it made sense why we weren’t allowed to bring our flip flops to the top of the volcano!  We were completely covered in mud and really didn’t want to deal with shoes yet.

There was a separate staircase going down the other side of the volcano to climb back down to the ground.  It was equally as steep and rocky as the stairs going up, but we had the added obstacle of being slippery with mud.  I was relying so heavily on my arms to slowly lower myself onto each step that my arms were sore when I woke up the next morning!!  When we got to the base of the stairs, the little boys had our flip flops lined up and they told us to put them on.  We really didn’t want to considering we were still covered in mud and didn’t want to ruin our shoes, but we saw that we now had a long walk (approx. 300ft) to reach the washing stations and it was very rocky and the ground was hot, so we had no choice but to wear our flip flops. Huge warning to anyone who visits the mud volcano:  it was extremely slippery trying to walk down this path, especially when wearing flip flops! We both came close to losing our balance and falling several times, and J’s flip flops actually broke where the piece that goes between the toes ripped out of the sole of his shoe!  He was left with broken flip flops for the rest of the day, and it wasn’t like we were at a commercial port where he could buy a new pair.

When we got to the end of the path, there were a bunch of women lined up with huge buckets of water to clean us off.  There used to be a lake here and we would have gone into the lake to clean off the mud, so this was their plan B during the drought.  A woman approached me and asked me to sit down on a stool, and she proceeded to pour salt water all over me (so much so that it got in my eyes… owww!).  She was extremely thorough and cleaned every part of me, including removing my ponytail elastic to clean my hair, and untying my bikini top to wash inside there, and down into the bottoms of my bikini too!  Do not go to the volcano if you have any modesty at all!!  It might not have been as bad if I was mostly submerged under water in a lake, but this was kind of uncomfortable knowing that other people could see me if they wanted to (although I actually don’t think that was an issue as everyone down here was going through the same process, and Superman and his buddies still had all our cameras up by the volcano so no one could document the bathing scene for posterity haha).  

After the salt water, the woman rinsed me again with fresh warm water. When she finished, we were free and done with the whole process.  That’s not to say that we were actually mud-free at this point, but we were done with what the volcano people had planned for us.  We slipped and slid our way back up the hill along the dirt path to reach the showers near where our bus was parked. They had 3 outdoor showers side by side so it’s not like I could get 100% clean, but I was able to be a little more thorough and get between my toes, inside my ears, and remove the rest of the mud from my scalp.  I actually found more mud inside my ears and belly button when I got back to the ship, so I was happy I remembered to pack Q-tips!  That mud got EVERYWHERE!

Once I was as clean as I could get, I got my bag back from the locker so I could towel dry off.  Louisa served us slices of fresh watermelon as a snack and we waited for the others in our group to finish cleaning up.  They also had a little stand selling bottles of beer for $2-$3 USD so we had some local beer while we waited.  Around this time, the volcano employees came back to collect their tips, and this is when things got tricky.  When we originally booked this excursion, we confirmed that it would be okay to tip the people at the volcano using US dollars, and Louisa re-confirmed that on the bus.  She said it would cost $2 USD per each of the 3 services, which was technically more money than if we paid the 4000 Colombian pesos due to the exchange rate, but we were okay with overpaying by a little bit for the convenience of not having to change our money.  I took 6 singles from my wallet and handed 2 bills to the lady who gave me my bath and she looked at it and asked for pesos.  I told her (in Spanish) that Louisa said US dollars was okay and that this was more than enough money to cover the exchange rate but she kept hounding me for more money.  I backed away and had Louisa handle it, but I could tell the bath lady was still staring at me.  It was very uncomfortable and I still don’t understand the problem.  The exchange rate was 2500-2600 pesos to $1 USD, so $2 USD was way more than the 4000 pesos I owed and I don’t know why this lady was being so aggressive.  I paid Superman and finally got my camera back (it had been more than 45 minutes since I exited the mud and I was starting to wonder if I would ever see my camera again! haha), and one of the mud men came to collect the $2 for their tips pool.  Once that was settled, I got back in the van and waited for everyone else… I was just trying to avoid any more conflict with the bath lady!  I think Louisa eventually explained that she had more than enough money from me, but that whole situation felt very awkward and uncomfortable to me.

Everyone piled back into the van and we drove away at 12:15pm.  Louisa originally said we had 1 hour to spend here, but it ended up being closer to 2 hours. We got to the end of the long driveway leaving El Totumo when someone from the back of the bus said we were missing 2 people!  We turned around and Louisa got out of the bus to look for them, and spent a good 15-20 minutes searching but could not find them.  I don’t know what happened to them but I thought it was odd that these people wondered off.  We were now one hour later than we were scheduled to leave.  I can’t imagine not thinking to keep tabs on at least a few of the others in my group to know when we were leaving!  There was a second van from our same tour company, so 2 people from that van rode with us and the other van stayed later to look for the missing women.  Louisa got a call 30 minutes later that they found the missing girls at one of the food stands. The volcano was literally in the middle of no where so they needed a ride back to Cartagena from a tour bus or they would never get back.  They struck me as very irresponsible to let their bus leave without them so they were lucky that second bus was there.  

Anyway, we drove back in the direction of Cartagena to a beach for lunch and arrived at 12:45pm.  This beach is frequented by locals and was called La Boquilla.  The sand was white and soft and stretched on for a great distance down the coast, but the water looked rough and grey and I wasn’t tempted to swim in it.  

Louisa said we would spend 1 hour here including time to eat lunch.  We ate at an open air restaurant along the beach with a thatched roof called Donna’s. Everyone on our bus sat at a long table and chatted while we waited for our food.

Lunch was very good, the chicken had a nice marinade, and the portions were generous.  Louisa offered us bottles of water, coca cola, or fruit juice, and we enjoyed our meals and the views.

After everyone finished eating and our plates were cleared, Louisa gave no indication that we would leave soon, so we just sat there and talked.  It was fun getting to know the others on our tour as there were a few couples from Australia who were on vacation for several months traveling around the world. It was so interesting to hear the stories of their travels, and they even taught us a few fun phrases that they use in Australia like “holy dooley” and “the cat’s pajamas” haha  

By 2pm, we were getting antsy.  The original itinerary said we would be back at the cruise ship by 2:30pm.  The beach was 30 minutes from the ship, plus we knew we had to drop off others at their hotels first.  All aboard was at 4:30pm and we needed extra time to make the long walk back to the ship because J was hobbling on his broken flip flips, plus we had yet to buy any souvenirs in Colombia and had planned to do some shopping at the port before returning to the ship.  I asked Louisa when we would leave and she indicated that we were staying at the beach longer.  Everyone wanted to leave, and some others had other tours booked that afternoon so no one appreciated that we would be late for our planned return time.  I explained that to Louisa and also that I was concerned the ship would leave without us if we were late.  Remember that all of this communication was in Spanish so some things were probably lost in translation.  At last, Louisa realized that we really had to leave, and at 2:30pm she showed us to a different van with 3 other couples and we left. Luckily, those 3 couples were at hotels in the old city, so it wasn’t out of the way like when we went to Bocagrande that morning, and we arrived back at the cruise port at 3pm.

I was very disappointed to end the day on such a sour and stressful note since we had a great time at the volcano.  I would highly recommend people in good physical shape and looking for an adventure book the trip to the mud volcano as it was an interesting part of Colombian culture.  I would even say that you should book with Cartagena Connections as they responded to all of my emails with the planning process and their prices were reasonable.  The only thing I would do different next time is that I would skip lunch at the beach. We had 3 options of how to book this tour:

1) Just the volcano

2) Volcano plus lunch at the beach

3) volcano, lunch at the beach, and kayaking through the mangroves

Option 3 wasn’t scheduled to end until 5pm (and based on how late we were to everything, I think they wouldn’t end until closer to 6 or 7 pm) so that wasn’t an option with our 4:30pm all aboard time.  I think the best and most valuable part of our day was the volcano, so I would skip the 2 hours at the beach if I could do it over.

Back at the port, we spent about 20 minutes buying souvenirs at the store, then walked back to the ship.  I noticed my legs had reddish brown streaks all over them, likely from the clay in the mud- I looked like I did a bad job with a self-tanning lotion!  

I have never wanted a shower so badly, and I spent over 30 minutes scrubbing off all the dirt.  I apologize to Celebrity as I ruined their wash cloth with all the clay stains from scrubbing my skin haha  Days later I was still finding red marks in hard to reach areas!  We got dressed and went down to the Martini Bar at 5pm for some pre-dinner drinks.  It is always fun to watch the excitement as they prepare our drinks! This is the Fresca Martini and the Sapphire Ginlet.

Very impressive to watch Yopi pour all 4 drinks at once!  The blue one was the Tropitini.

Beautiful view of the sunset over Cartagena as we sailed away

Two martinis later, we made our way back to the Tuscan Grill for my birthday dinner at 6:30pm.  This was a fabulous dining experience from start to end. We were seated at a window table overlooking the wake as we sailed through the night.

Having never been to a specialty restaurant on Celebrity, we asked our waitress to explain the process to us.  She said that we could order as much or as little as we wanted from each category on the menu, and she made a few suggestions for popular dishes.  I apologize in advance for my photos from this dinner… the ambiance was so dark and elegant that I did not want to use my camera’s flash so all of the photos are very dark and a bit out of focus.

There is also a section of dishes that cost an additional fee on top of the $45 to dine here.

Homemade Braised Beef Ravioli

Ahi Tuna

Tuscan Onion Soup

Spaghetti alla Bolognese

Filet Mignon

Baked Pecorino Mac and Cheese and Truffled Parmesan Steak Fries

Every dish was beautifully presented and delicious. The only slight-miss for me was the Ahi Tuna as the sundried tomatoes overpowered the fish.  By the time the desserts came out, we were both so full we could barely eat it!

Fondue for dessert

A few minutes later, our waitress came out with a birthday cake for me!  It was a large piece of chocolate cake with a candle on top, and after I made a wish and blew out my candle, she offered to have it delivered to our cabin as she could tell we had no room left to eat it haha

We rolled out of the restaurant over 2 hours later at 8:45pm, and went straight to the theater for the comedian Keven Lee.  I did not care for him much- he seemed very unprofessional by walking away from his microphone so we couldn’t hear everything he said, and throwing his props all over the stage, and all of his jokes were dated.  Maybe it was just the early wake up time, or the busy day in port, or the big dinner, but I nodded off a few times during the show.  Luckily he didn’t notice or he may have made fun of me!  

We went back to the cabin for a quick nap when the show ended at 9:45pm, but ended up sleeping through the night.  We were both really tired and needed the rest, although it would have been nice to stay out later with a sea day coming up tomorrow!

Sunday, March 20 ~ Cartagena, Colombia (day 1)

One of the things that made us most excited about this itinerary was that it would allow us to step foot on our 4th continent: South America!  Another unique feature of this port would be that we were staying here overnight, giving us 2 full days to explore all that Colombia has to offer.  As I’ve already explained, we did not know we would be here overnight when I originally booked the cruise, but once we got over the initial shock and delved into the research, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise as these were 2 of my favorite days of the entire cruise!

My original plan was to use one of these days to explore the old city of Cartagena, and to use the other day to go to a beach.  I love beautiful Caribbean beaches, but this itinerary offered only 2 beach/swimming ports, so I wanted to make it work for us to use one of our days in Colombia at the beach.  After a bit of research, I learned that there are several beaches along the Atlantic coast in Bocagrande, but the water is murky instead of that crystal clear Caribbean blue I was seeking, and the beaches were more meant for the locals than for the tourists.  It just didn’t seem like how we should spend our day, so I looked into alternative options. Another popular tourist activity is going out to the Rosario Islands for the day.  These islands offer the beautiful beaches and snorkeling that we wanted, and there are daily boat tours to take us there. Unfortunately, these boats leave at 8:30am (too early for our Sunday in port as we were scheduled to dock at 10am) and don’t return to the old city area of Cartagena until 4:30pm (too late for us on Monday as that was all-aboard time).  I tried to find a private tour operator who was willing to take us to the Rosario Islands in a time frame that worked with our schedule, but it was very expensive and we ultimately decided to look for another option.  

That’s when I stumbled upon the website for Cartagena Connections
(http://www.cartagenaconnections.com). Wow, this was a huge resource for tourism in Cartagena with so many different things to do and see!  Originally I thought they were the tour company, but then I learned that they are more like a middle-man to facilitate tourists to book excursions through other companies.  They responded quickly to all of my emails and thoroughly answered my questions in fluent English.  After looking through the many options on their website, I discovered something truly unique and intriguing: El Totumo Mud Volcano!  There is a bottomless volcano filled with mud instead of lava, located in the countryside about an hour from Cartagena.  Locals and tourists alike go into the mud for it’s smoothing effects on the skin and it’s supposed to have medicinal properties as well.  I will save the specifics for when I talk about our day there, but this seemed like an amazing cultural experience that we could not resist. We knew this would be a little out of our comfort zone, and we weren’t 100% sure of what to expect, but we wanted to try it out.  The people at Cartagena Connections were able to arrange for the tour bus to pick us up at 8am at the port instead of in Bocagrande, so that took care of our plans for Monday.

Now to tackle how we’d spend Sunday in Cartagena…  I was originally planning to map out all of the touristy and historical sites in the old city to plot out a self-guided walking tour, but then I discovered Free Tours Cartagena!  This seemed too good to be true!  It offered a 2-hour walking tour to all the major sites in Cartagena, with an English-speaking guide… for FREE!  Of course, they ask you to tip the guide at the end of the tour if you are happy with your experience, but we would tip a paid tour guide too, so that’s a wash.  Here is the description from their website:

We offer walking tours and excursions in and around Cartagena, our guides speak English and Spanish for school groups and individual visitors. The guides are motivated by their passion for Cartagena and its historical and cultural treasures, besides the legends narrated that give a unique touch to our tours. We cover the main sights of the walled City. Our goal is to make the visitor spend a good time, which is why we tailor each tour according to the group.  Our local guides with their vast experience and versatility to transport you full of charming colonial Cartagena. Walking tours of the most representative sites of Cartagena.

This would be Palm Sunday, so I wasn’t sure if the tour was running as planned.  I registered us for the 3pm tour via their website (http://freetourcartagena.com.co/us/index.html) and received an email
confirmation that we were all set.

Back when I was looking through the Cartagena Connections site, I found another interesting activity that we wanted to try. Cartagena has these old school buses called Chivas that they revamp by removing the windows, painting it with bright colors, and with bright flashing lights, and they use them as tour buses around the city.  They offer tours during the day to all the major touristy sites, and it appears to be a standard city tour, but they also offer tours at night, and that’s when things heat up!  They call them Rumba Chivas tours, and they are more of a party bus.  Here is the description from the website:

Putting the RUM into RUMba, the night Chiva tours are a distinctly Colombian affair with live musicians playing Vallenato, an open bar with local liquor and plenty of opportunity for fun. You’ll tour around the city of Cartagena (which looks even more romantic and captivating at night!) and make new friends while you chair-dance your heart out. They are definitely tacky.. but with the right group they can also be a lot of fun if you come armed with the right attitude.  The night chiva tours run for 3-4 hours, include your booze and some snacks plus entry to a club afterwards. All for the bargain price of 45,000 pesos.  Tours depart around 8pm from the Laguito/Bocagrande zone. Or you can join the tour later on closer to the clock tower and the centro near the Pirate ships (although you miss the tour of the beachside neighborhoods)

We thought this might be a safer way for us to experience the Colombian nightlife in a controlled (albeit touristy) environment, without going off on our own in a strange city with questionable safety. We opted to prepay $18 per person for this tour via Cartagena Connections because they accepted PayPal and US Dollars (the other option was to pay in Colombian Pesos when we met the bus for the tour, but we didn’t want to worry about changing currency if we could avoid it).

With 2 full days of activities planned, we woke up around 8am on Sunday morning without an alarm clock, excited to finally step foot in South America!  We got dressed and headed up to the Oceanview Cafe for breakfast just as Captain Costas came on the overhead for an update.  We were scheduled to dock at 10am, but we were running approximately 45 minutes late because of our 2-hour delayed departure from Panama last night.  It wasn’t ideal, but this was one of the few days when we weren’t in a rush to get off the ship, so it didn’t impact our day at all.  

I got creative with my breakfast today and combined raisin challah, cheese, fried eggs over hard, and smoked salmon into a delicious breakfast sandwich.  It was so yummy that I repeated this breakfast 2 or 3 other times later in the week!

After breakfast, we went back to our cabin to watch the sailing into Colombia from our balcony.  Unfortunately for us, the port side cabins have a much better view for this entrance, but we could still see a little of the skyline and the other cruise ships in port.

I don’t know where they’re going, but I bet it will be fun!

Once we were nearly docked, we went up to deck 15 to capture the panoramic views of Bocagrande.

I hope he didn’t have to swim to reach his work station for this morning!

The ship was cleared by around 11am, so we headed down to the gangway on deck 2 to start our day. After you get to the end of the pier, turn right and it is about a 5 minute walk to reach the shops at the port.

They have a large gift shop selling jewelry and souvenirs, and a Juan Valdez Cafe with lots of outdoor seating (and paid wifi, but we didn’t use it so I don’t know how good it is).  If you walk through this corridor towards the port exit, you pass through a really fun bird sanctuary.

This was a really unique feature of the port in Cartagena and we spent about 30 minutes exploring.  They have all sorts of birds roaming free, uncaged, and they are all very tame and used to having people near them so we could get very close without any safety issues.

This iguana was climbing on shore from the ocean

Side note:  To anyone who was curious about the humidity in Cartagena… my hair was stick straight when I woke up this morning.  Notice how it’s curling and getting frizzy?  It was extremely humid when we went outside this morning!  Luckily, that did get better as the day went on.

I just wanted to show how close I got to the birds…. they were all unphased by all these humans walking around!

It was free to walk around the sanctuary as long as you wanted, but we only spent about 30 minutes there.  We may have stayed longer but it was incredibly hot and humid.  We were already dripping in sweat and our day had only just begun!  One problem we had with this port was that it was extremely difficult to navigate.  We wanted to get out to the exit gate before getting a taxi to save some money, but we ended up walking in circles and wound up back at the Juan Valdez Cafe instead! When it is this hot and humid, we didn’t want to waste energy and time walking in circles… we just wanted to get where we needed to go ASAP!  When we finally did find a exit, we were hounded by taxi drivers.  They were extremely aggressive and would walk up to us and say things like “Walk this way!” or “Over here!” or “Come with me! I’m your guide!” and it was hard to get past them to continue out of the port.  

Eventually, we figured out how to get to the real exit gate on the main road, and we were again hounded by taxi drivers immediately. We could see that this was where we needed to give in and take a taxi as the road became busier and cars were driving at higher speeds beyond that point.  We found a man who quoted us $10 USD to get to the city center so we went with him as I had read that most taxis cost $15-$20, and $10 should be considered a great price.  Looking back, we probably could have bargained him down to $7 or $8 since $10 was his starting offer, but by that point we were so hot and sweaty and tired of all the drivers jumping at us that we just wanted to be done with it and inside an air conditioned car!  We thought the guy we went with was a taxi driver, but it turns out that he was more of a taxi solicitor because he then turned around and hailed one of the taxis driving onto the street.  He told us to get in the back seat and he sat in the front and told the driver where to go. The entire experience was very shady and left us feeling uneasy and stressed out.  Not the way we wanted to start our time in Colombia!  We were so excited for our first experience on a new continent in South America, but we were off to a rocky start!!

After 10 minutes of terrifying driving (it gave me flash backs to being in taxis when I lived in NYC and often just closing my eyes to avoid seeing the scary maneuvers the drivers did haha), we arrived at the clock tower gate to the old city.  

On the way, we caught a glimpse of the fortress:

We had originally requested he take us to the Juan Valdez Cafe, but he told us we had to exit here.  I’m still not sure why, as there were plenty of cars driving through the city center, but I guess this was just easier for them to find their next fare, even if it wasn’t what we thought we were paying for.  The taxi solicitor tried to stay with us when we got out of the car and wanted to give us a tour, but we just wanted to walk around on our own so we paid him for the ride and left.  

This was where he dropped us off.  As you can see, there were plenty of taxis on the main road outside of the walled part of the city.

We walked through the entry gate and immediately saw a large tent filled with vendors selling all types of goods, crafts, and jewelry.  You can see the white of the tent through the openings in the stone wall:

We looked around for a bit, and some of the items were really tempting to bring home as souvenirs.  Unfortunately, this was only the start of what would be a loooong day of walking around and we didn’t want to carry the stuff with us all day, so we couldn’t buy anything.  

The other reason we stayed in the tent was to avoid being out in the blazing sun, but eventually we knew it was time to continue on with our day.  From our first steps walking down the first block, I fell in love with the old city of Cartagena!  It was like taking a trip back in time, with narrow streets lined by brightly-colored Spanish colonial-style churches, monasteries, plazas, palaces and mansions with their overhanging balconies and vibrant flowers.  Everywhere your look, there’s something to see, and it really felt like you were transported back in time to a pre-internet land of horse-drawn carriage rides.  

A statue of Pedro de Heredia, the first governor of Colombia.

We could have spent days wondering the streets and getting lost in this charming city (if it wasn’t for the heat and humidity!), but we first wanted to find the Juan Valdez Cafe.  J loves coffee, so one of the first things he wanted to do in Cartagena was to drink Colombian coffee!  I wasn’t really sure where we could find good coffee that takes US dollars, but when I stumbled upon the Juan Valdez Cafe on a Google Maps search, I thought that might be a good choice.  I thought it may be a bit touristy, but that would be a good thing as it was more likely to take foreign currency and maybe even have people who spoke English.  Plus, they had free wifi so I would have something to do while J drank his coffee!

I had printed out a map from Google before the trip, and noted the location of the Cafe as well as our meeting point for the free walking tour, but it turned out to be completely useless!  I don’t know where Google gets their data, but they labeled all the streets as either “Calle” or “Carrera” followed by a number.  Juan Valdez Cafe was supposed to be at the corner of Calle 6 and Carrera 36.  The problem was that none of the streets were numbered!!  They all had names, so as quaint and historic as the signs looked, the street names didn’t match the map we were holding.  

Way to mess up our plans, Google!!  We tried walking a few blocks to see if we could find a numbered street and gave up with no success.  We went into a few stores to ask the employees for help, but most didn’t know where their store was located on my map nor did they know where the Juan Valdez Cafe was located.  Finally, we found someone who knew that the Cafe was just one block away!  I was very grateful for all of my high school and college Spanish classes as I spoke Spanish with the locals many times over the next 2 days haha

So remember how the main reason we wanted to go to the Juan Valdez Cafe was because we assumed it would be more touristy and more likely to accept US dollars?  How ironic that this turned out to be the ONLY place that did NOT take US dollars for the entire cruise!!  The cashier spoke no English at all, but we were able to order a few drinks and pay with a credit card.  I would compare the experience to going to a Starbucks- not quite the experience we expected, but at least it was very clean, had strong air conditioning, and plenty of open seats for us to relax for a bit.

They did have wifi, but it was extremely slow. After nearly a week without internet access, this wifi wasn’t cutting it to load all the unread emails and new Facebook posts.  We stayed for about 20 minutes and used their clean restrooms before leaving to find food for lunch.  They did sell food here, but it was only a few pastries and nothing that would work as a lunch meal.  On the bright side, we now knew our location on my map and could keep our bearings by counting streets from the cafe.

On a side street one block later, we found Kebab Express Restaurant.  It was completely empty aside from the one waitress and one cook, but the AC was strong, the wifi was free, the food was inexpensive, and the restaurant was clean, so we gave it a chance.  We made an excellent decision!  I ordered a shawarma with chicken and J ordered a chicken kebab.

Ironically, the wifi here was way faster and they did take US dollars, so we should have come here instead of the Juan Valdez Cafe! haha Both of our dishes were served as wraps, and they were delicious and flavorful.  It was a little weird when we tried to pay, as the waitress seemed confused about how we would pay with US dollars.  The first thing I asked when we entered the restaurant was if they took US dollars and she said yes, but now she gave us the check in Colombian pesos. After a bit of back and forth, she said we owed her $9.  Not a bad deal for 2 sandwiches and a soda!  Despite the issues paying at the end, it was a nice lunch experience and we were on our way within 45 minutes.

We spent the next hour walking around the streets as we made our way towards the meeting spot for our walking tour.

One of the many plazas:  Plaza de Santo Domingo

The “Fat Lady” statue by sculptor and artist Fernando Botero

There were lots of vendors set up along the sidewalks, and many sold these colorful bags.  I was tempted to buy one but decided against it as I only like bags with zippers.

One of the fun things to do here is to walk along the top of the walls.  This reminded me a lot of my day in Dubrovnik, Croatia.  The views from the top of the walls were fantastic as we could see the ocean to one side and the city to the other side.  

I always love to see the canons along the fort walls, protecting the city from invaders.

We even had a view of Bocagrande in the distance!

Our big plan for today was to take the free walking tour that I found online. Our confirmation said to meet the tour at the Plaza Santa Teresa at 3pm.

Before the tour started, we popped into the Hotel Charleston to use their restrooms.  The lobby of this hotel is beautiful, with ornate flower displays and a fancy restaurant with seating in the open-air inner courtyard.

We met our guide in front of the Naval Museum (the blue sign in the picture above).

There were a lot of people at the meeting location, but the guides divided us into 2 groups for the Spanish and English tours. We had 25 people on our tour, and our guide Edgar took us over to a spot with some shade as he introduced himself and explained that our 2 hour walking tour would likely take closer to 2.5 hours.

Edgar originally founded this company because he loves to travel and enjoyed free walking tours in cities all over the world, but he realized that there was no such tour in his home city of Cartagena.  You can tell he truly loves his city and he loves sharing his city with visitors.  We spent the next 2.5 hours walking all over the walled city as Edgar explained the history of Cartagena and pointed out notable landmarks in perfect English.

This is Catalina- one of the main symbols of Cartagena

Saint Pedro Claver talking to a slave.

This lady is called La Palenquera.  Edgar explained that many years ago, women dressed like this actually sold fruit.  As Cartagena became a slowly-emerging city of tourism, visitors would approach these women and take photos of them, and then hand them a dollar or two to say thank you.  The women were confused at first, as these visitors had no interest in the fruit they were selling.  They soon realized that they could make more money getting tips from tourists for posing in photos than they could for just selling fruit.  Today, you will see las palenqueras all over Cartagena, and while they all carry fruit in their head baskets, most are only looking for you to take their photo and pay them.  This lady stayed with our tour group for at least 20 minutes, walking to multiple different sites on our tour, until she finally left.

I loved these little statues.  They have different ones all over the city in the plazas, each depicting a different custom or cultural element.

The church of San Pedro Claver

The Customs House

The flag with the green is the flag of Cartagena.  The other is the flag of Colombia.  The yellow represents all the gold found on Colombian land, the blue represents Colombia’s shores and rivers, and the red represents the blood shed for Colombia’s independence.

Edgar explained that if any of us were traveling to other cities in Colombia (only about 8 of us were from the cruise ship), that we should not say we had just been in Cartagena.  Instead, we should say we had been in “La Heroica” as that is the city’s nickname in reference to their heroic battle against the Spanish to gain independence.  

We ended up back at the plaza where we started our day as Edgar explained the history behind the clock tower.

Cartagena Cathedral (notice all the art vendors lined up along the street!)

I loved the intricate details of the church tower.

This is the Museum of the Torture.  I wished we could have gone inside as I think it would have been interesting, but we didn’t get to go inside any of the museums on this tour.

The hat Edgar is wearing is one of the symbols of Cartagena.  They wanted to create something that everyone would know only came from their city, so they designed this unique hat.  I loved how animated he was as he told each story with immense passion.

Edgar gave us a few minutes to walk around the Claustro de Santo Domingo- a Dominican monastery from the 1600’s

Many of the doors around the city had these unique door knockers, which were used to identify the homeowner’s profession and class.

Another popular tourist activity is to take a horse-drawn carriage ride around the city.  I think Celebrity offered this as one of the excursions, although you can probably set it up on your own if you want.

This is one of the most popular bars in Cartagena.  Notice the sign in the middle of the wall (for those who don’t speak/read Spanish, it says “We don’t have wifi- talk to each other!”)

The tour ended at 5:30pm several blocks north of where we started, in the San Diego neighborhood.  Our plan was to have drinks and dinner and watch the sunset over the ocean at an outdoor restaurant up on the city walls called Cafe del Mar.  It got great reviews on Trip Advisor for both the views and the atmosphere, although the food and drinks were said to be a bit pricey (I guess you are paying for the location!).  Unfortunately, by the time we got there, there were no tables left. As great as the walking tour was, I wished it ended on time at 5pm as we probably would have found a table at that time.  In the end, it wasn’t a huge deal as we looked at the menu and it was extremely limited and while we probably would have stayed for a drink, we wouldn’t have wanted to eat here anyway.  We took advantage of the beautiful views and took a few photos before heading on in search of another dinner option.

We walked along the city walls until we reached the Plaza Santa Teresa, where we originally met to start the walking tour. There was another restaurant on top of the wall, also with a huge seating area and views of the ocean and the sunset, but it was 90% empty.  I’m not sure why it was so much less crowded than Cafe del Mar, but we found the menu to be significantly better with tons of options and reasonable prices (and yes, they took US dollars).  The restaurant was called Tascabar el Baluarte San Francisco Javier (maybe the fact that the name doesn’t quite roll off the tongue contributed to the lack of a crowd here? haha), and it was located directly across from the Hotel Charleston.  We took a table right along the edge of the wall with a beautiful view of the water. We each ordered grilled chicken, steak fries and veggies, and the total bill came to $37 USD.

One complaint about this place was that there was literally no lighting, so once the sun set, we were eating in the dark aside from the light from the moon.  I couldn’t even take a photo of our dinner plates!  Also, as is typical in the Caribbean, service was verrrry slow.  If you are looking for a leisurely place to eat dinner, I would definitely recommend this restaurant as the food and atmosphere can’t be beat.  They were even setting up a band on the stage as we left, so I assume there was going to be some live music later in the evening. Too bad we had other things planned for tonight and couldn’t stick around to enjoy it!  

By the time we finished dinner, it was totally dark and the plaza looked beautiful with all it’s lights.

If you look in the bottom left corner of the photo, you can see some orange cones set up in the street.  That was used as a taxi stand and there was a man standing there to hail us a taxi.  We needed to get to Bocagrande to meet our evening activity (that’s the section of the city with all the tall modern buildings from some of my other photos). The taxi cost $5 and took less than 10 minutes.  We got there so quickly that we were now about an hour early for our pick-up time for the Chivas bus!  We started to walk around and explore the area but soon realized that there wasn’t much to see… just a lot of high rise condos and hotels.  We decided to go back to the location where we needed to meet the bus and we would just sit there and wait for it to arrive, even though it was 7:45pm and our pick up time wasn’t until 8:15.  

Within 2 minutes, a man holding a clip board walked up to us and asked for us by name!  We thought it was really weird that the bus was already there to pick us up considering we were 30 minutes early, but we weren’t complaining as that was better than twiddling our thumbs for that whole time!  We walked out to the street with the guy with the clip board, and we saw this coming down the street…

There were already a few people on the bus, and the guy directed us to sit in the third row.  Since we had pre-paid our $18 each before the trip, we were good to go. We spent the next 45 minutes driving in circles around Bocagrande picking up other people for the bus.  Now we knew why the bus came so early!  Apparently they spend an hour before the official tour start time picking up the 50 people who are registered so we didn’t have to waste that time during the real tour.  They kept us very entertained for that hour as the 4 person band took up one of the rows in the bus and they played their accordions and guitars while singing Colombian songs very loudly. The bus had bright flashing lights, so between that and the noise of the band, and the cheers of the tourists onboard, we certainly drew a lot of attention from those walking on the sidewalks! haha  We knew going into it that we’d be a bit of a spectacle, and we also knew the whole thing would be an interesting cultural experience, so we just went with it.

By 8:30pm, the bus was full and the guide came on the microphone to explain how the night would go.

But… we had a problem!  When I booked this tour with Cartagena Connections, they said we would have an English speaking guide.  Not only did this man not speak one word of English, he spoke the fastest Spanish I’ve ever heard!  So much for all of those college Spanish classes as they did me no good on this bus. I couldn’t understand a word he was saying.  Of the 50 people on the bus, at least 40 people were native Spanish speakers and only a handful of us were American.  Clearly we were in the minority and the guide made no effort to help us understand what was happening.  Luckily, the girl sitting next to me was born and raised in Bogota, Colombia, but she goes to boarding school in Indiana so she spoke perfect English and could translate for us!!  She was a lifesaver!  

The bus pulled over to the side of the road and the guide jumped out for a few minutes.  That gave us a few minutes to chat with the girl next to us and she filled us in on the plan for the night.  We were going to drive to the Fortress for a 10-minute photo op, then we would drive to an area where all the other Chivas buses gathered together and we’d have a party in the streets for about an hour.  Then they would call us back onto the bus for a little snack before we went to a club for the remainder of the night.  

This little pit stop also gave every vendor in Cartagena the opportunity to descend on our bus!  Maybe THAT’S the real reason for all the loud music and flashy lights? So the vendors know where to find us! They came right up to the side of the bus and shoved their goods in our faces (remember, there aren’t any windows or doors on this bus so there was nothing to stop them!)  They sold maracas, colorful flashing light sticks, noise makers, hats, cigarettes, basically anything you’d ever need to have a party on a moving bus.  They were really persistent too!  Unlike most vendors we had encountered thus far, these guys didn’t take “no” for an answer.  They did this every time we stopped at a red traffic light too, but this was way worse because we were parked here for a good 15 minutes.

Finally, the guide returned to the bus with lots of supplies.  He handed each row on the bus a bottle of rum, a bottle of juice, a bucket of ice, and a stack of cups.  This wasn’t exactly Celebrity caliber bartending skills haha  On second thought, maybe they were mimicking the mixology class?

Each row had built-in cup holders mounted to the row in front of them so we’d have a place to stash our supplies when the bus started moving again.

Once we had all the essentials, the band started up again as we drove towards the Fortress.  Now is when the real fun started!  As best as we could understand, the guide wanted each of the guys to stand up and dance (as the bus was driving down the road!) row by row, and we would vote for the best dancers.  Then it would be the women’s turn.  People took their dancing very seriously!  They stood up on the seats, shook their rear ends, and danced on the poles in the bus.  The competition was fierce!

After a few minutes, we pulled up at our first stop. We all piled out of the bus and tried to take a few photos in front of the fortress… too bad my dinky point-and-shoot camera isn’t that good at low light shots!

Of course, all the vendors found us here too. There were 4 or 5 other Chivas buses here at the same time, so I have a feeling all the buses drive the same route and the vendors know where to go to find the tourists.  

While we were here, we noticed the 4 girls sitting in front of us were trying to ask the guide how to get a taxi.  They didn’t speak one word of Spanish, and they were told they would have an English-speaking guide, and they didn’t realize we were spending most of the tour riding around on the bus, so this whole evening just wasn’t what they had in mind.  I helped them explain to the guide that they wanted to leave early and he got a taxi for them.  

After about 10 minutes, the guide gathered us back up and told us to get on the bus so we could continue with the tour.  Now that those girls left, J and I were the only non-Spanish speaking people left on the bus!  We felt completely out of the loop, but agreed to stick it out a little longer, hoping the evening would get more fun when we got to the bars.  We drove back into the city center, and J and I thought we were going to a bar now.  We pulled into a parking lot with a bunch of other empty Chivas buses and the guide said to follow the crowd and to come back in 45 minutes for snack time.  

When we got to where everyone else was going, we found out that instead of going to a bar in a building, we were going to a makeshift bar up on top of a section of the city wall.  There were about 200 other people from the other Chivas buses already there, and they had a little push cart filled with liquor- I guess that was meant to be the bar?

The whole thing just seemed very fabricated and touristy.  Instead of going to a bar as we expected, we were basically standing around on the sidewalk outside in the dark with a bunch of other tourists.  It wasn’t the authentic experience we were hoping for, and we were bored, so we debated our options.  We could suck it up for another hour until we finally got to go to the last stop on the tour:  a real bar! Or we could call it quits now, get a taxi, and go back to the ship early, knowing we had an early wake up call for tomorrow.  Plan B ultimately won out, and we left the party.  

Unsure of where to find a taxi, we started wondering through the streets until we saw a taxi coming down the street.  I’m not sure if we had good timing or if it’s typical to find empty taxis driving around at 9:30pm, but either way, this taxi was willing to take us back to the “barco” for $10 USD so we went with him.  At first, I wasn’t convinced that he knew which “barco” we were talking about, and I didn’t know how to say “cruise ship port” in Spanish (“barco” means boat).  I tried to say “barco grande” (big boat… lol), and after a little back and forth, we felt confident that he knew where to take us.

J and I were chatting about our evening in the back seat of the taxi when all of a sudden we heard a song on the radio that made us do a double take. Most of the songs were in Spanish so we kind of blocked it out since we didn’t really understand the lyrics anyway, but then we heard the singer say “I’ll never go back to Georgia!”  What?!? Did I hear that right?  “No, No , No, No, I’ll never go back to Georgia!“  Yup! They definitely said that!  Then they went back to the verses in Spanish lol It was so random!  No offense to those from Georgia, but it seemed baffling that people in Colombia had even heard of that state, let alone felt strongly enough about it to write a pop song!  When we got home from the cruise, we looked it up on YouTube, and sure enough, it’s a real song!  Sooooo random!!

We still make jokes about this song, several weeks later! haha  I dare you not to get it stuck in your head!!  A few minutes later, the taxi driver said we arrived back at the port…. but where’s the ship??  From where we were, we couldn’t see the ship or any signs indicating that we were at the cruise ship port!  No fellow passengers walking around.  No Celebrity employees welcoming us back.  No cruise ship photographers begging to take our photo.  Granted it was nearly 10pm, but it seemed so empty and deserted that we weren’t sure we were in the right place!  We saw a few people sitting on the curb and one of them was wearing a somewhat official looking uniform, so we asked the taxi driver to back up to where he was sitting so we could ask if this was the right place.  The man confirmed that this was the cruise port… I guess it looked different to us in the dark, and without all those crazy taxi drivers hounding us to get in their car!  Since all the buildings at the port were closed, they directed us to walk around the outside of the building and to turn right towards the ship when we reached the water.

It was a welcome sight when we saw this..

It is a rare treat to be off the ship after dark and to see the ship lit up at night!  It always makes me so happy as it’s so beautiful with all the lights on, reflecting against the water.

Fingers crossed that those lines don’t break free right this second and that the ship doesn’t run me over!  You can really feel the size of the ship from this angle…

Once we got back to the gangway, we saw more sings of life.  A few members of the crew were getting off the ship as we got on, likely heading out to enjoy a night on the town.  The crew member checking our seapass card confirmed that someone will be out there all night long so passengers are free to come and go through the whole night if they wanted to.  By now, it was 10pm and we were ready for a snack so we ran up to the Oceanview Cafe for some pizza.  Not quite ready to call it a night, we grabbed a few beers at the Gastrobar (or rather, I had a cider since I much prefer that over beer!)

A little before midnight, we got back to our cabin to pack up our bags for tomorrow and put out the room service breakfast tag before going to sleep.

Up Next: a unique cultural experience for day 2 in Colombia